Dutchman Tries To Get Career Flying Again

June 16, 1991|By Phil Hersh.

He is a scorer in a sport where goals have become more and more precious, a man whose right foot can make a soccer ball do tricks. For that, Marco Van Basten is rewarded handsomely, earning about $3 million a year, and he often pays a dividend in one-in-a-million goals.

Van Basten scored such a goal for the Netherlands in the final of the 1988 European Championship against the Soviet Union. He was standing far to the right of the net but only a few yards in front of it when he received a pass. Playing the ball without letting it touch the ground, Van Basten hooked it from that impossible angle into the net for the goal that made the Dutch 2-1 winners. It was his fifth goal in the tournament`s five games.

That goal served to punctuate the beginning of a two-year span in which Van Basten, 26, was the world`s most acclaimed striker. In that time, he won two ``Golden Balls`` as the top player in Europe, led the Italian League in scoring and powered his team, AC Milan, to a pair of victories in the European Champions Cup.

But the last year has not been as kind to Van Basten. He comes to Soldier Field for Sunday`s 1:30 p.m. match between AC Milan and the U.S. National team having added only the scalp of a coach to his record in the past season.

First, Van Basten was held scoreless as the Dutch were a huge disappointment in the 1990 World Cup, barely qualifying for the second round, where they were eliminated by West Germany. Then his scoring for AC Milan dropped from 19 to eight goals. Finally, his feud with coach Arrigo Sacchi was a pivotal factor in Sacchi`s resignation, because team owner Silvio Berlusconi sided with Van Basten.

``Everything doesn`t always go well between two people,`` Van Basten said in Toronto, where AC Milan played twice last week, tying Benfica of Portugal 1-1 and the Canadian National Team 2-2.

The current ebb in Van Basten`s career is nowhere near as low as where he was immediately before ascending to superstardom. It was the end of his first pro season outside Holland, and Van Basten had missed most of it after his third leg or foot surgery in four years.

He had come to AC Milan after leading Ajax of Amsterdam to three league titles, three Dutch Cup titles and a European Cup Winners title. He was at odds with AC Milan officials who felt the in-season surgery was unneccessary. The relentless pressure from fans and press in Italy was suffocating the introverted Van Basten. At 23, he contemplated quitting.

``One evening, I found myself face-to-face with my future,`` he said. ``I thought about it for hours. And I decided to grit my teeth and come back. It proved that physically and psychologically, I was strong.``

Van Basten finished that season by helping AC Milan win the 1987-88 league championship, its first such title in nine years. The next two seasons in the Italian League, he scored 38 goals in 59 games, a prolific pace in contemporary soccer. Yet he also yearned to be more of a playmaker, to play the ``total soccer`` created by Dutch soccer genius Johann Cruyff, and that caused some of the conflict with Sacchi.

``He told me, `You are an attacker, and you must score goals,`` Van Basten has said.

Perhaps Sacchi`s successor, Fabio Capello, will be more amenable. That will make it easier for Van Basten to fulfill an AC Milan contract that runs through 1993.